petak, 29. studenoga 2013.

Bhob Rainey - When you talk, you hear from the other side (2013)

When you talk, you hear from the other side was constructed from two wire spool recordings found in an antique shop in Western Massachusetts. The content of the spools makes it clear that they were recorded in 1951 and 1952 on a machine that was a Christmas gift to a nine-year-old boy.

Unsurprisingly, most of the first (and longest) spool is populated by Christmas revelry and multi-generational goofing, but there are captivating passages from both before and after Christmas day: a salesman demoing the unit to various customers; an interview between a snotty eleven-year-old boy and a spirited, if bewildered, four-year-old girl; etc.
When I first heard these recordings, I was with a small group of people, and we listened and laughed for a few hours before I suggested that maybe we should archive the material. We’d already seen the wire snap a few times during playback. (This was a general problem with recording on wire; one that was frequently remedied via a faux- soldering job with the smoldering end of a cigarette. We just tied the wire back together.)
The machine had a line-level output, but the connection hardly resembled any modern standard. So, an RCA cable was stripped of its plugs on one side, and the bare cables were stuck into the output. This worked surprisingly well, and the recording was successfully archived.
Recordings like this can really nag at you. I wanted to be happy just having an amusing trace of a mid-century, middle class, American Christmas and to be reminded of the ridiculous things a recording device draws from people when they feel their way around its place in their lives. But then there’s the voice that says, “Do something with this.”
To be fair, this voice is pretty easy to activate and not always the best judge of material that should have something “done” to it. Still, there was something special about this recording: kids and adults messing around in equal quantities; a newscast (captured from a brand new television) describing the Alger Hiss / Whittaker Chambers trial; a girl explaining that she loves her dog because “she likes to tear clothes”; a man offering to sing “Home on the Range” in “Jewish” (and forgetting most of the words); countless incidents of “regular” people adopting a media affect and stumbling all over themselves. I eventually started doing stuff to the material.
There are a lot of pieces of music, particularly in the realm of Musique Concrète, that exploit and manipulate spoken words to elicit what has become a fairly typical haunting / lecturing effect. I’ll admit that this is the angle I first took with this material: layers of “alien” sounds interspersed with voices from ANOTHER TIME(!) that simultaneously anchor (via comprehensible speech) and destabilize (via disembodiment and decontextualization) the musical experience.
This strategy didn’t work out for me. Perhaps in the hands of someone like Lionel Marchetti, it would have had a brilliant outcome. To me, it sounded forced. Worse, it obscured the qualities of speech and idiosyncratic language that attracted me to the material in the first place. I decided that, instead of using pieces of this recording for some other musical purpose, I would try to amplify its inherent resonances and expose whatever was already musical within it.
With that in mind, the construction of When you talk, you hear from the other side became more effortless. I restricted myself to few effects (the majority of manipulations involve playing the recording back through different speakers) and few musical gestures (sometimes loops of wire and / or microphone noise are added to highlight shifts in content and timbre). The bulk of the piece relies on layering and editing.
By avoiding grand gestures and virtuosic electronic manipulations, I discovered that I was basically showing a love for these people and the glimpse of the world that their recording gave me. The piece became a fond, dynamic remembering of a life I never lived with people I never met. So, at the end, in the spirit of nostalgic indulgence, I let it all fall asleep and dream about itself. Eventually, the dream itself fell asleep; a sleep without dreams (Side B: The other side of what).
Of course, when I’m talking about the piece dreaming, I’m talking about the more overtly “musical” parts (and, really, I would say “dying” instead of “dreaming”, if that didn’t make people feel bad). I say dreaming (or dying) because the music keeps erasing itself; peeling away; evaporating; no longer concerned that you’re listening. The other side of talking.
And this music sat with me for some time. I would revisit it now and then, make some tweaks, but never push to release it. “To publish anything is folly and evidence of a certain defect of character.” (at least, that’s what Thomas Bernhard says on page 34 of the 1984 University of Chicago edition of Concrete). While I’m not without this character defect, I couldn’t make the connection between this music and an “anonymous” audience. I couldn’t imagine it in the world by itself.
Nancy Bernardo presented the opportunity to give it some company. She was asked to participate in a “duos” exhibit, pairing visual and sonic artists, and proposed that I provide the sonic element. Normally, I would take this as an opportunity to do something new, but Nancy’s work has so much in common with When you talk, you hear from the other side, from its material to its production, that I sent her a copy to see if it resonated with her.
It did, and the result was a set of eight layered glass collages that visualize what Nancy felt were key moments in the piece. I loved the set. I felt that it gave me permission to let this music loose and stop protecting it (i.e., protecting myself from being embarrassed by it). Nancy agreed to make two more sets, and I went ahead and pressed a record (99% of the source material is from a wire spool or tape – it had to be an analog release).
So, this path ends in a very limited edition of three records plus glass collages, with each set of collages being unique. When those are gone, 250 EPs remain. When those are gone: traces, echoes, decay, forgetting, work and play and rest (and digital rips, but let’s pretend…). - www.bhobrainey.net/

Bhob Rainey (nmperign, The BSC) finds some decaying spools of wire from the early 1950s in a thrift store. He discovers the sounds of a family playing with a new recording device over Christmas, making fake jingles, recording snippets of conversation, and attempting comedy sketches. He carefully toys with the material, playing different elements through different speakers to enhance the sense of space, looping background noises to add some timbral spice and chopping through the snippets of chatter. He finds a collaborator in Nancy Bernardo, who patiently compiles a series of glass collages in response to this bizarre segment of middle-class American history. He casually brings Jason Lescalleet over to build some dense and arresting musique concrète from the idiosyncratic noises that flitter through the recordings. He summarizes the development of the work in an eloquent and informative essay. What a scoundrel. - Gordon Bruce

Two videos from my studies of A-Life, AI, and chaos:

Axon Ladder
The FitzHugh-Nagumo ("FHN") model is a "relaxation oscillator" that approximates the excitation of squid neurons. It exhibits chaotic behavior that, when sonified, moves from pure tones to overtone-rich buzzes to white noise. The sonic material here is made up of networks of FHN oscillators. These produce idiomatic, speech-like phrases that are tracked for silences and used to trigger changes in speed / timbre / density. The results are arranged in non-linear, contrasting plateaus. This is a downmix of a quad recording.

Out of all the experimental musicians I love, I find that Bhob Rainey is among the most consistently interesting ones working today. Even though Rainey’s compositions often employ a wide variety of different tools and span an array of experimental sub-genres, all of his work is united in it’s subtle use of space, dynamics, and texture. “Levitate” is Rainey’s soundtrack to a film by Leah Ross, and the piece finds the composer working in a surprisingly ambient vein while still maintaining many of his oeuvre’s signifiers. “Levitate” doesn’t have any of Rainey’s signature sax playing on, it but his use of various field recordings and toys often sound eerily similar to some of his nmperign work. Throughout, Rainey’s electroacoustic sounds blend with Chris Forsyth’s lovely guitar harmonics and some truly guttural low frequencies to create a lovely piece that’s reminiscent of the work of Olivia Block and Oren Ambarchi. However, “Levitate” remains distinctly Rainey’s own, and his decision to highlight found-sounds similar to his own playing style serves to show both the influence of the outside world on his approach to saxophone and how his compositional voice shines through, no matter what tools he chooses to work with. - www.tinymixtapes.com/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src="http://f0.bcbits.com/img/a3891811621_3.jpg"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Manual is a combination full-length album and book focusing on the music and improvisational practice of the BSC, an eight-member electroacoustic ensemble formed by saxophonist and composer Bhob Rainey in 2000. More than just music with copious liner notes, Manual examines the process of improvisation from both within and outside the BSC, encountering topics ranging from genealogy to architecture, the boundaries of sense to the benefits of failure, flows of energy to bouts of guilt. The intersection and unfolding of ideas is often complex, but the writing in Manual is earthy and comprehensible, keeping jargon to a minimum without sacrificing the depth of the subject matter. Manual is not a monument to the BSC but rather an appreciation of improvisation from the perspective of an especially prolific community.
The music portion of Manual consists of three extended improvisations covering a six-year period in the BSC’s history. The most recent piece, a vividly captured concert highlighting some of the more elegant aspects of the BSC’s unique musical lexicon, was recorded in 2009 and includes renowned composer Pauline Oliveros on accordion. The earliest piece was recorded in November 2003 at the end of The BSC’s only extended tour and contains some of the noisiest, most unhinged work the ensemble has ever released. 2007′s “23% Bicycle and/or Ribbons of the Natural Order”, recorded in Somerville, MA, provides a balance between the other two tracks, illustrating the BSC’s strong formal control amidst chaotic conflagrations of feedback, tape degeneration, and general instrumental instability. Stage plots and recording notes are included for each track.
The book portion of Manual contains contributions from five writers. Bhob Rainey (director and founder of the BSC) provides an introduction in which he engages with the book’s other contributors while reflecting on failure, adaptable dispositions, and the upside to being oblique. Damon Krukowski (musician, poet, half of Damon & Naomi, one-third of Galaxie 500, and one-fourth of Magic Hour) contributes a series of prose poems aimed at evoking certain effects the BSC’s music has on him. Aaron P. Tate (classicist at Cornell University whose areas include ancient and contemporary improvisation), through extensive research and interviews, pieces together and examines the BSC’s early history and rehearsal practices. Tate uses this information, along with recorded documentation, to approach the music with great insight from a dynamic, open-ended perspective. Ben Hall (percussionist, gospel archivist, and restaurateur) unravels ideas about genealogy, community, politics, and authority as they present themselves in the tradition from which the BSC emerges. And Mike Bullock (audio/visual artist and bassist for the BSC) develops two metaphors for evaluating music like that of the BSC, applying these metaphors to an analysis of the 2009 performance with Pauline Oliveros featured in this release.

"For those with even a passing interest in the workings of this group of musicians... Manual along with the three accompanying recordings is an indispensable document"- Michael Rosenstein, Paris Transatlantic

"Incisive and trenchant... their music inspires." - Philip Clark, The Wire

Weasel and I probably would have met anyway, but the person who introduced us was our mutual friend, Bill Pisarri (RIP). In fact, the only time we played together prior to this outing was in 1999 with Bill, Kurt Johnson, and Greg Kelley (Greg and I drove 36 hours straight from a gig in San Francisco to make that show on time. It was at Myopic Books in Chicago. Total fee: $0. It was worth it. We also recorded two short tracks in Bill's apartment immediately upon our arrival, both of which appeared on our first Intransitive release, the title of which is too long to repeat here)
So, Rob Cambre set up this show for Weasel and I at the Mudlark Public Theatre in New Orleans. Probably two of the ten people who heard about it thought, "That's an odd pairing," and by virtue of having that thought, they sucked for a short period of time. I mean, in 1999, there were plenty of people who thought that I was the quietest saxophone player ever, while an equal amount of people thought that Weasel was an enormous asshole (=not quiet, intelligent, musical, etc.). Chalk it up to not caring about the details, but can we move on now?
Anyway, this is what we did at the Mudlark. We like it. It's got a nice structure. We'd do it again. I hope you enjoy it, and Weasel probably hopes so, too.

In 2010, after years of friendship and musical intersections frequently revolving around Austin's No Idea Festival, Chris Cogburn brought this trio together for concerts in Texas and Mexico, supported by the Meet the Composer Foundation and USArtists International. Arena Ladridos (roughly, "Barking Sand") captures the intensity, intimacy, and adventurousness of these strong-minded musicians as they methodically bleed this music into existence.

"At the same time, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence.”
There is, often, a gorgeous sense of calm about this record, not a loss of focus or laziness but a willingness to let little happen, for however long it takes, for however long it needs; not imposing, not leading, following the sounds as and when they ask to be heard or made. Though it’s by no means a particularly silent listen, one feels that the lines quoted above, from Simone Weil, do somehow fit: each sound is filtered through a corresponding quietness, each sound is coaxed out of silence and falls back into it, like a wavering fleck of light suddenly emerging, then disappearing back into shadow again. This shouldn’t imply the monastic discipline or asceticism that Weil might have at the back of her mind; rather, the sense is of something relaxed, not casual exactly, but un-worried about grabbing attention or creating something that screams ‘I am important! Listen to me now!’ As time passes, not much might have happened, and so what? Spaces are filled enough, more than enough, so much of the time, and a genuine contemplative quietness can do no harm. To some, this may come across as aimlessness; and, true, compared to the composed or partially-composed work in this area, there is less obvious ‘focus’, less of a clear structural framework. But for me, that’s quite an attractive respite; listening to ‘Arena Ladridos’ allows one, free of overt structural considerations, to quite clearly imagine oneself into a physical space, to imagine the musicians sitting there, in front, perhaps, of a small audience, inhabiting the small room for forty-five minutes, sometimes filling it with sound, sometimes easing back and letting the room itself have a say in matters. There’s something about the logic with which things unfold that means this could be nothing other than a concert recording: the presence of hesitancies, even meandering moments – the imperfections which prevent things from having a surface’s that’s too shiny, that’s ‘just-so’.
The first piece begins with tinkling bells, maybe just jiggled or shaken or knocked slightly with the tips of fingers, electronic crackle, and wisps of breath amplified/modified through saxophone bell and keys. My somewhat whimsical way of listening to this opening minute or so is to imagine that the three musicians are ‘introducing’ themselves, in overlapping fashion. Here is percussion; here is electronics; here is a saxophone. But the separation is really less clear-cut: though it’s normally fairly obvious which sounds are percussion, the concentration on vague or merging tones from electronics and saxophone tend to create a grey area in which anyone could be creating any particular sound. At one point, the sound of a passing car seems to sub for Jones’ electronics, replacing her drone tone with something remarkably similar. It’s not all subtlety and hush, though: Jones’ playing is, at times, quite deliberately harsh, generating sudden beeps that sound like a warning signal, an electrical malfunction, an alarm, and Cogburn’s playing can be quite assertive, though he generally treats his drums as a surface to rub and scrape rather than one to strike and beat.
Indeed, there’s quite a variety of incident on display: there are a large number of events, however unhurried the pace, and one never feels that the players are holding anything back, practicing an overly studied reticence or aloofness; instead, they are using patience as a general method of working, and the results are to make gestures which elsewhere might seem small or un-dramatic (a surging consonance of crescendo – a half-choked wail rising and falling on intake and outtake of breath – the sound of almost conventional rhythms from drums) possess intense power and concentration. Equally, though, things could go the other way, all three musicians temporarily silent, while a dog barks, or a car distantly passes – where a sine tone sounds like a sucking in of breath or a tiny, suppressed whisper – sounds, sometimes, that seem to come from outside human agency, like those eerie screeches and rumbles one hears from on high in railways stations and near building sites. This or a swelling drama, a concord/concourse, not rising to shared climax, surging only to swell down again. Matthew Horne, in his review of the album for ‘Tiny Mix Tapes’, describes the process as a group aesthetic in which all three players hover around a particular area for several minutes, attempting, and failing to break out, before eventually moving away in quite dramatic form: “The trio quickly settles into what would be called a restrained 'attractor,' i.e., a stable point or cycle at which the variables hover around (up to minor perturbation). Just over four minutes in, the group attempt to dislodge the muted aesthetic, with each crescendoing simultaneously. But this perturbation is weak, resulting in a regression back to the original, minimal attractor. It isn't until around 12 minutes that the group breaks free of their initial state: Rainey's sax oscillates wildly while Jones introduces an intrusive feedback more akin to [Toshimaru] Nakamura's troublesome no-input mixer, thus disturbing their environment enough to evolve the system.” It’s a nice formal encapsulation of a music that seems to avoid formal systems in the moment of listening, of unfolding: but perhaps it belies the actual lack of overt tension (so often a driver of improvised music) that I feel when playing the CD back; despite abruptions from Jones or from Cogburn, despite intricacies of flow and of incident, the overall impression is unforced, unhurried, unharried. Here, as Weil puts it, noises have to cross the silence before they can be heard." - David Grundy, Eartrip Magazine

"There’s a markedly transparent sound to this trio with silence and ambient sound a distinguishing element to the unfolding improvisations. The character of each of the musicians makes a specific and discrete mark on the music; Rainey’s fricative overtones and sibilant use of breath, Jones’ burred and cracked circuits, and Cogburn’s gesturally abraded percussion. Their music is a tightrope display of careful listening as the three explore a dynamic sense of elastic balance. Over the course of these two sets, the trio evolves a potent collective vocabulary... Each of the members eschews the use of conversational activity, instead, pursuing vectors of countervailing lines that coalesce around velocity and dynamics while creating a mutable tension. The three can drop down to near silence with wisps of detail or erupt in boisterous crescendos, but they emerge in a natural progression rather than any forced sense of formal arc. Rainey is fairly well documented, but Jones, and particularly Cogburn, have not recorded as frequently; this is a particularly welcome release and one I’ve been going back to often." - Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise

"Arena Ladridos is an aesthetic delight, an album that invites both overwrought analysis — [as the author does in the review - you should read it] — and passive splendor — which I recommend you experience." - Matthew Horne, Tiny Mix Tapes

Chris Forsyth at Evolving Ear originally asked me to do an 8" lathe cut for his label. I was hesitant for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I had already consigned a number of pieces to the format fetish void (a 3" CDr, a split LP, download only, etc). Still, I gave it some thought. I had been working on a number of complex, large-scale pieces, some with Ralf Wehowsky, some for dance and film, others to who knows what ends, and I began to feel that the time and conceptual constraints of a "single" might be refreshing. I convinced Chris to let me do a 7" instead of a lathe cut (I didn't need to go THAT lo-fi), and I set about making two formally related pieces with clear, simple trajectories; pop songs from a broken mind. And that's sort of how it went. The two sides of this release, "A Desert of Consolation" and "The Summering Unsound", both follow a singular form: an ambiguously intensifying exposition followed by an unfolding of previously hidden elements. The materials, however, could not be more different: "A Desert of Consolation" consists almost entirely of synthetic sounds lying in a narrow frequency band, while "The Summering Unsound" is made up of a good deal of untreated field recordings, beats, and broadband noise. And, though I followed my dictum of simplicity in the pieces' trajectories, I couldn't stop myself from piling a lot of layers into the mix. So, there's a simple, if perverse, horizontal unfolding, and a morass of detail vertically. Kinda like a nice pile of fall leaves with a rake and skeleton hidden inside. I should also mention that artist Elaine Kaufmann made the beautiful, hallucinatory covers for this release. No photo would do them justice, as they play with real light in a way that's difficult to describe or reproduce.

In the mid-1800s, Adolphe Sax set out to create what would essentially be a loud-ass clarinet. At least, "loud" was the dominant criterion. He apparently liked military bands and wanted some blaring (and portable) woodwind to enter the ranks. Of course, he also produced "classical" models of his invention, but, according to rumors, a rather vindictive German composer who had a beef with Sax conspired to keep the instrument away from the European canon. I'm inclined to think that the uncontrolled squawking sound contributed as much to this phenomenon as did the putative conspiracy. In any case, the classical models grew quite rare early in the instrument's history.
We all know by now that the saxophone found another home in popular music, which, for a time, was called Jazz. Its strident sound sat very well on top of all manner of percussion, and in the hands of some masterful players, that baby could really cry. And it cried and whispered and sang and screamed... and so much of that still sounds just fantastic and so un-marching band-like that who knows which way the old Belgian is twisting in his grave. But you have to admit that sometimes the crying sounds as if at least one teary eye is gazing towards an Oscar. And everyone knows to regard that coquettish whisper with some suspicion. The sax rarely takes off its performance face.
Still, you might sometime happen upon a stubbly one, alone, hunched over the bar. You're friendly, and it responds politely enough, if a bit distant. The conversation seems bound for nowhere, but a silent gulf, and this late hour, opens into a stammering confession. The sax is talking to no one in particular, using names and mentioning details you could never know about; not exactly making sense, but conveying a kind of hurt - the kind we're better off having trouble expressing. You get it. You know it's a proud hurt, one you wouldn't want to lose but rarely want to show. You want to be the nameless consolation the sax is seeking as much as you want the sax to be too drunk to remember you tomorrow. For now, you're helping each other, and it's going to be okay even if it never changes because it's been okay before, even great, and it hadn't changed then, either, did it? So you cut the guy a mile of slack and just listen. And one little world disappears, so that the other just hovers for a while.

Recorded on the road in various rooms in early 2000, 6 Standing Desert remains Rainey's most raw and exploratory solo work. A long middle section pushing every sonic nook and cranny the saxophone has to offer is surrounded by mic-bleeing microtonal melodies sounding both urgent and somehow natural. Remastered for girth and warmth with plenty of rawness left in.

5 years and a mint's worth of postage bring us this dense, musique concrete epic. Each of the three extended pieces presented here have undergone serious transformations, mutilations, and rebirths, as discs were burnt, sealed and sent from Cambridge to Mainz and back again. Yet, despite all the fine-toothed combing commited by the obsessive perfectionists at the helm of this project, the music is wild, ruptured, assymetrical and WAY INTENSE. Tendrils of possible outcomes camoflage trap doors and the saturated memories of an unclean conscience. This is that kind of sublime that's a bit on the scary side despite the occasional reassurance of a slowly flowing rhythm or an almost major chord. This is the haunted closet you can't keep shut.

"This extremely long-in-the-making (five years!) collaboration between these two titans of the avant garde finally arrives with high expectations that are summarily met. Rather than something academic and difficult, it is instead a captivating and visceral work.
To avoid getting too deeply into the realm of art interpretation, it would seem that Wehowsky and Rainey were heavily inspired by the nature of personal communication. Perhaps a given from the nature of their interactions: this entire collaboration was performed via postal mail, the track titles are relative to communication, as well as recurring motifs through the tracks, such as disembodied voices, fragments of phone calls, etc.
The title track is flanked on either side by two shorter pieces, beginning with "Awaken Elsewhere, Unforeseen." An overall intensely dark feeling permeates the track, using a collage of metallic scrapes, breaking glass, and a percussive knocking. Music that is focused on found and abstract sound, then treated with processing such as this can often just come across as a mish-mash of recordings that don't go anywhere, but Bhob and Ralf rise above this pitfall. Both show an excellent ear for composition, and it is obvious in this first track, allowing the collages of sound build and build in depth and volume until it becomes massive, then the tension dissipates, letting everything fall away to rebuild again.
The title track encompasses more than half of the volume of this disc, opening with a disorienting mix of loops and metallic reverbs that build upon each other until reaching a towering wall of noise that cuts away to reveal the distant field recordings of children playing, footsteps and movement. A bit later some tortured saxophone on behalf of Rainey can be heard, barely recognizable after both have treated the sound. This interplay between the processed electronic sounds and field recordings continues throughout the 20 minutes of the piece, alternating between the spacious recordings of the outdoors and dense analog electronic drones that would be appropriate on some of Sunn O))) or Wolf Eyes work. Not only is this stylistically similar, but in intensity and mood as well. Throughout the 20+ minutes of this track, it's almost like an audio document of the mind of a stalker or some inhuman creature hunting its prey, lurking in the distance just out of sight. Cinema for the ears, indeed.
The final track, "Re: Hi!" is a little more assaultive on the senses with bursts of feedback, vacuum cleaner white noise, and car horns which eventually give way to minimal analog crinkling sounds and digital birds flying in the distance. A bit less subtle than the prior tracks, but just as interesting.
Rainey and Wehowsky have created a sonic journey out of some of the most unrecognizable sounds. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is going on here and that's exactly what makes for such a captivating listen. It's unfortunate that this collaboration had such a Fitzcarraldo level of difficulty in its completion, because a follow up would be a very good thing." - Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed

"Wehowsky albums take their time to appear, and the gestation process of the magnificent I don't think I can see you tonight, his collaboration with Bhob Rainey, is lovingly described in the notes printed in the gatefold cover of the disc. For example: "April 2003 With some goading and inspiring suggestions by Ralf, Bhob records numerous saxophone excursions, most significant of which is a variation on Ralf's 'Drunken Walk' suggestion, where Bhob plays saxophone, rolls around in an office chair, bounces a ping pong ball with his feet, and generally causes distress in an already cluttered attic where he lives. Ralf invokes Sun Ra's Black Forest Myth, Cecil Taylor's Tales From The Black Forest and Brötzmann's Schwarzwaldfahrt on his own journey through Germany's dark woods: Black field recordings by Ralf." And so forth. Amusing and honest, but not quite what you'd put in your CD if you were applying for a teaching position in a composition faculty. Not that I'm suggesting that's where Wehowsky belongs (he already has a good day job as it is, thank you very much), but from where I'm sitting this is one of the most important works of electronic music to appear this decade. Or musique concrète, if you prefer, though I think the old ideological distinction between the two doesn't mean much anymore. Field recordings – and there's another expression that's outlived its usefulness: how can you make a field recording in a cluttered attic? – are here to stay, but Rainey and Wehowsky show that there's a lot more to making music than just slapping them into Max / MSP or some such application, diddling about with EQ and adding a few fades and FX here and there. Take the time to understand your material, live with it, get to know how it behaves, what it will and won't do, and then take the time to design and build a compositional structure that will reveal it to its best advantage and surprise both you and anyone listening to it, again and again. Above all, take the time. As the irritable old geezer who repairs Woody's arm in Toy Story 2 says, "you can't rush art!" Listen to how the title track emerges slowly from a shell into which fragments of recognisable noises are being sucked as backwards soundfiles, taking nearly seven minutes to reach the open air, where distant sounds of children at play, footsteps and tiny smears of saxophone multiphonics and all manner of sonic building blocks both recognisable and tantalisingly inscrutable are gradually brought together to construct the musical equivalent of a Gothic cathedral." - Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic

Recorded in Austin and Marfa, TX, and inspired by the gorgeous desolation of the high plains desert, this is music of exquisite, simmering beauty.

In 2010, after years of friendship and musical intersections frequently revolving around Austin's No Idea Festival, Chris Cogburn brought this trio together for concerts in Texas and Mexico, supported by the Meet the Composer Foundation and USArtists International. Arena Ladridos (roughly, "Barking Sand") captures the intensity, intimacy, and adventurousness of these strong-minded musicians as they methodically bleed this music into existence.
Tracks:
Govalle (26'02")
Marfa (23'07")

"Arena Ladridos is an aesthetic delight, an album that invites both overwrought analysis — [as the author does in the review - you should read it] — and passive splendor — which I recommend you experience."
- Matthew Horne, Tiny Mix Tapes

Lossless download is $3 (or more, if you like).
The motive behind improvising with new players is frequently to find a new music in yourself. Sometimes, this new music is found in a struggle, where opposing approaches attempt to meet in a play between power and tolerance. More rarely, the new voice simply causes the music to appear - no struggle, all play. The music happens to you, and you just stay out of its way.
When Nmperign met with Jake Meginsky, the music happened to us. Participation was pure joy. Even with long silences and sudden changes, there was always the sense of being carried by a purposeful force. For me, this single, 14-minute piece conveys that force. I couldn't imagine it surrounded by other music. It warrants its own platter; a single object for a singular moment. I hope you enjoy it.
All LP purchases come with a download code for the lossless file, which can also be purchased separately for $3 (or more).
From the label:
REL012 is the recorded debut of the trio Nmperign with Jake Meginsky. Pressed on 160 gram copper plate mastered vinyl, REL012 features Nmperign in an energized, turn-on-a-dime form. Prodded by Meginsky into unnamable, angular textures, the trio is agile and unpredictable, occupying musical extremes with intelligence and grace. REL012 is a one-sided LP cut to
45 for Maximum Dynamic range. Featuring a striking cover, designed by Eli Keszler, printed by Ashley Paul. A light blue fold-over paper is integrated in to a heavy picture disc sleeve, labeled with a color sticker. Screened notes are featured on the inside. REL012 is a one-time, hand-numbered edition of 300 copies.

Two boisterous pieces of musique concrete, one from Rainey, "Ain't it Grand", and one from Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (aka Chris Cooper of Fat Worm of Error, BSC, etc), "Journey to the Center of Something or Other"Listen to "Ain't it Grand" on Last.fm

5 years and a mint's worth of postage bring us this dense, musique concrete epic. Each of the three extended pieces presented here have undergone serious transformations, mutilations, and rebirths, as discs were burnt, sealed and sent from Cambridge to Mainz and back again. Yet, despite all the fine-toothed combing commited by the obsessive perfectionists at the helm of this project, the music is wild, ruptured, assymetrical and WAY INTENSE. Tendrils of possible outcomes camoflage trap doors and the saturated memories of an unclean conscience. This is that kind of sublime that's a bit on the scary side despite the occasional reassurance of a slowly flowing rhythm or an almost major chord. This is the haunted closet you can't keep shut.

The two CDs in this compilation are edited by Bhob Rainey and Kenneth Goldsmith, respectively. The first disc is made up of pieces composed exclusively for this compilation: solo performances by artists whose use of acoustic sources provides a dialog between acoustically and electronically produced music. Artists include Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan, Charles Curtis, Bhob Rainey, Taku Unami, Chris Corsano, Liz Tonne, and Ellen Fullman.

as Nmperign

Sale until June 30th, 2012!
The highly anticipated double-CD epic by Jason Lescalleet (tape loops) and nmperign (Bhob Rainey - soprano sax, and Greg Kelley - trumpet). The result of six years of live and studio collaboration, LM2X is by far the most ambitious and uncompromising statement yet by this formidable trio. The album begins simply enough with an ominous trio track, but don't get too comfortable... over the course of the next two hours, the ground steadily shifts, the bottom drops out, and any expectations a listener may have had going in are thoroughly trampled. Fans will find the usual ingredients here: crusty old reel-to-reel tape decks, cheap keyboards, amplified and acoustic horns...but rude tape splices, violent humor, and confusingly degraded fidelity push the music far from safe territory. The visceral drama of LM2X does not neatly spell out its intentions, nor does it signal exactly what it has up its sleeve. It exists in its own universe, demands repeat listens and to be taken on its own terms.

A GORGEOUS recording of a super-focused, razor-sharp nmperign performance in a bizillion-dollar concert hall in the UK. The label is 7hings, and they've prepared a full package for download with artist interviews and everything. Check it out at:

In 2000, Greg Kelley and Bhob Rainey made their first trip to Europe as Nmperign. One stop was Kule in Berlin, where they played a show and stayed for five days in the apartment building that, at that time, held Axel Dörner and Andrea Neumann. The plans for the Thanks, Cash tour with Axel and Andrea were hatched at this time, but there was also an informal quartet session with Axel and Burkhard Beins that produced a series of song-like pieces that were unlike anything these musicians had done previously. Twisted Village released the music on LP, which sold out rather quickly. Still, the album is continually regarded as a seminal EAI recording, and so it is presented here, beautifully remastered in its original, full-resolution format.

You may name your price for the lossless download, so that we may accommodate people who have already purchased the LP and/or lossy downloads. Standard prices apply at iTunes and other online stores.

Flatform - Quantum + Trento Symphonia + Movements of an Impossible Time + A Place to Come + Can Not Be Anything Against the Wind + 57.600 Seconds of Invisible Night and Light + Sunday 6th April, 11:42 a.m. + About zero + With Nature There Are no Special Effects, Only Consequences (f)

Ben Rivers - The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes are not Brothers (f)

Cheryl Frances-Hoad - Glory Tree (m)

Thomas Adès - The Twenty-Fifth Hour (m)

Daníel Bjarnason - Over Light Earth + Processions + Solaris (m)

Dobrinka Tabakova - String Paths (m)

Jacek Sienkiewicz - Nomatter (m)

Veli-Matti Puumala - Anna Liisa (m)

Bill Douglas - Trilogy: My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home (f)

DIALECT - Gowanus Drifts (m)

Robert Enrico - Au coeur de la vie (f)

Kara-lis Coverdale & LXV - Sirens (m)

Uljana Wolf - i mean i dislike that fate that i was made to where (b)

Mempo Giardinelli - Sultry Moon (b)

Jean-Marie Straub - Dialogue d'ombres (f)

Klaus Hoffer - Among the Bieresch (b)

Maxim Biller - U glavi Brune Schulza (b)

Svend Åge Madsen - Days with Diam + Virtue & Vice in the Middle Time (b)